Generally described, wireless devices can be utilized to transmit and receive data and, in some cases, consume media items in electronic form. For example, a user of a wireless device may connect to a network-accessible content provider via a communication network. The user may then download data from the content provider, such as an electronic document, and view/edit the document in electronic form using the wireless device. The user may also access multi-media data, such as audio or video data, on the wireless device. In yet another example, the user may utilize a software browser application on the wireless device to request and view a Web page from a server computing device.
Providers of wireless devices are generally motivated to ensure a technically predictable and reliable performance of the devices. In general, for some devices, such as mobile phones, it may be possible to do limited testing on battery performance in a laboratory environment. For example, a mobile phone battery may be tested in a laboratory environment for duration of the battery in a “talk” mode and in a “non-talk” mode. However, other types of wireless device performance, including other aspects of mobile phone performance, may not be easily recreated or tested in a laboratory environment. For example, general laboratory testing environments are not well-suited for testing device performance given wide variations in reading habits, content, transmission and/or storage of content, etc.